Pimo put him in my path, of that I am sure. And – as is the case when divine Source Consciousness is choreographing the events of your life – it happened in the optimum way.

A good night was picked for our meeting for starters. It was the first day of my two-week summer vacation, and I had a little more than usual wiggle room and headspace in my life for dealing with the unexpected.

When I found Toma lying motionless in the middle of road at something-past-ten at night, he was only a few minutes drive from where Pimo had fallen less then three weeks before.

He was so small I actually thought he might be a rabbit and, at first, I thought he was dead.

Half-reluctantly – feeling exhausted after an excessively hot and humid day – I found a suitable place to turn around and drove back; thinking to move him to the side of the road. “If it was Pimo that would be what I’d want for her,” was how my thinking went.

I keep a pair of gloves in the back of my car for such occasions.

When I bent down to move him however, he flailed in my hands and I promptly dropped him back on the road in surprise.

You see I am not a natural animal lover.

In fact, I’ve been scared of them – to varying degrees – since I can remember.

Summoning up courage, I somehow managed to pick him up successfully and get him to the side of the road.

A closer inspection with the flashlight revealed that although he couldn’t seem to move his legs and had excreted in the road in his shock at being hit, he didn’t actually have any visible injuries and there was no blood on the tarmac.

He has at least a chance at life, I thought.

Any true animal lover wouldn’t have hesitated. They would have picked him up in their arms, put him in their car, and took him right home.

But I would not call myself a true animal lover. Nor was I used to cats. I was scared of his teeth and claws even in his tiny and injured state. I hesitated for a long, long time.

I found myself thinking of how if he recovered I would find myself the somewhat reluctant owner of a cat. “Was that really what I wanted?” I asked myself.

Although still mourning the death of Pimo, I had started to think about how I could go on more trips now.

I loved the sense of freedom that came with that.

But then there was this life that I’d found. This life whose heart was still beating, and who had crossed paths with mine.

Even if I wasn’t a firm believer that “we don’t meet people (cats) by accident, they are meant to cross our path for a reason;” the circumstances around this particular meeting were too extraordinary for me to put it down to mere chance.

There was the location and the timing, as I mentioned above.

And then there was the fact that as I was grieving Pimo and integrating the lesson of self-forgiveness surrounding her death, I saw not once but twice – from two different sources in my Facebook feed – the following quote:

At the time of Pimo’s death if I had only managed to stay calm I may have been able to save her. I knew that then, and I know it now. I’m not saying, though, that that would have necessarily been best.

Everything happens according to the perfect design and timing of the Universe.

Everything happens according to a logic and order which takes into account the interconnectedness of the whole.

It is my feeling that part of the reason Pimo passed in the way she did was to give me the chance to learn these karmic and life-lessons of self-forgiveness and calm.

On the day of her passing I lost my calm in a big way.

Calling people who lived nearish by, I completely forgot to call on any of the help available in the non-physical realm. I also made a bad decision from an ungrounded place that lost precious time on a day in which time was of the essence.

Some good reasons there for mastering the art of remaining calm.

Once I’d acknowledged what the Universe was trying to say to me through the synchronicity and repetition of the quote, the words of Hans King as heard on the Beyond the Ordinary Show came back to me.

Bravely, bravely, wondering if I really dared to do so; I said to the Universe, my guides and angels:

“Please give me this lesson again and help me to get it right this time.”

I must confess I added some conditions.

In no way was the lesson to come in the form of something that I would mourn the loss of or a human life at stake.

I could see, however, that the circumstances would have to be somewhat dire in order for there to be a lesson – a need for me to stay calm – in the first place.

Ideally, I thought, it would be someone else’s pet in trouble. I would be the one to step in with my calm superpower and magically save the day.

Even as I found Toma lying in the road that night, my words to the Universe echoed in my mind. I felt sure this was my chance to “do it again.”

I can’t really say I got it 100% right this time round, either.

I put the injured Toma in the boot of my car for a start, afraid he might somehow recover his strength and attack me. And it took me till we got to the all-night vets (an hour’s drive) to remember to surround my newfound four-legged friend in light and ask the angels for their help.

But I would certainly say that I did a better job of staying calm and taking right action – the fact that Toma is still alive today is testament to that.

The night I found Toma was ripe with such synchronicities.

The death of Pimo had brought up some old regret about a deer with broken legs I’d found several years ago abandoned after a hit and run. Not knowing how to respond, I had called a Japanese friend who had called the police. I stayed with the deer for nearly three hours until they finally came.

At first I was as scared of the deer as it was of me. Keeping a wary distance I put some water in Pimo’s bowl I kept in the car and pushed it close in case the deer needed to drink. It didn’t. But I think it sensed my intention. It stopped trying to drag itself away from me and remained still; no longer afraid of my presence.

As we sat facing each other in the deep of night – the deer seemingly calm and serene despite the severity of his injuries and me entranced by the dream-like quality of it all, I started to notice how much like Pimo he looked with his big brown eyes, long delicate eyelashes, and fur.

In that instant the deer became known, familiar.

Pimo was far more than a dog to me. She was family.

Living with her for years had taught me that there weren’t that many differences between us. We were both sentient beings. Only she walked on four legs and had fur; while I walked on two legs and didn’t. (Or not much anyway).

If this deer was similar to – kindred – to Pimo; then he was also similar to – kindred – to me.

By the time the police arrived, I’d been gently stroking the deer’s forehead for hours.

The policemen were visibly moved. But I’d always wished I had been able to help the deer more. I mourned the loss of this precious life; the part we, as humans, played in it.

After the death of Pimo I found myself thinking of the deer again, wishing there was something more I could have done.

As I left my village that night to drive the injured kitten to the vets, two deer appeared in my headlights in separate places on the side of the road. Two deer honoring my connection with one of their kind. Two deer honoring the life of Toma. Two deer thanking me for my commitment to the faltering life in my car, wishing us Godspeed on our journey.

Like the deer from that night long ago, Toma had been hit by a car and was unable to walk or stand. The Universe was giving me a chance to relive that situation, too; a chance to do the “something more” I regretted not doing the first time around.

As if that weren’t enough, there was also the “co-incidence” that Toma was paralyzed in three of his legs. That combined with the fact that he couldn’t see and had a higher than normal number of white blood cells in his blood work suggested to the vet that he’d been hit on the head by the car that left him sprawled in the middle of the road.

The best course of action she could suggest was hospitalizing him immediately and giving him an MIR when the surgery reopened on Monday. Even then the prognosis wasn’t good. Depending on what the MIR revealed, his condition may or may not be treatable. And the cost – before treatment – was astonishing; more than my month’s wage just for the hospital stay and MIR.

I thanked her for her help, let her give Toma a shot of nutrition, and said that I would take him home with me.

She cautioned that if I did, he was almost certain to die. I had known that was a strong possibility when I found him.

But Pimo knew what she was doing when she put Toma in my path. She knew that I could help him in ways that, perhaps, others couldn’t.

The law of synchronicity says that everything in the Universe is interconnected. Sometimes connections that are unfathomable at the time become apparent later.

Thanks to my experiences with Pimo and her rear-leg paralysis last year, I knew how successful acupuncture can be in recovering the use of limbs.

Following my own recovery from near depression as a result of energy healing, I’d also been setting an intention for Pimo to receive any and all vibrations and frequencies she needed for her greatest and highest good from wherever they may be in the Universe, and visualizing her filled with and surrounded by white and golden light on a pretty much daily basis since the start of the decline in her health.

These were avenues of healing that wouldn’t be open to Toma if he’d been picked up by anyone else.

“There is no such thing as chance or coincidence. Synchronicity springs from the deepest source of destiny.” (The Tree of Awakening)

For me it was second nature to surround Toma in healing light the entire time we were at the vets, holding the intention for the maximum amount of healing possible for him and for the energies and frequencies he needed to come into his body and energy fields. I’d also asked Archangel Raphael, the healer, for help and healing on Toma’s behalf.

Toma was not expected to live. Apart from his paralysis and temporary blindness, his body temperature was six degrees below what is considered normal for a cat. This more than anything, the vet said, suggested his condition was critical. Following her advice to keep him warm, when we got home I put him in a box with a heated pet mat and a blanket. I continued to surround him in light.

He seemed better than the vet’s diagnosis would have suggested by morning. We didn’t get home until about 4am. Toma woke me up only a few hours later with a couple of loud “Meows,” using his one good paw to knock against the box.

The acupuncturist who had treated Pimo offered to come that afternoon, despite it being a Sunday. The transformation after the treatment was nothing short of miraculous. Before Toma could only lie with his back legs twisted to one side. Immediately after he started to drag himself around the room on his belly. By evening, though his stomach was still flat to the floor when he tried to walk, his legs were no longer twisted.

Come the next morning he was able to raise his stomach off the floor and walk around in an almost normal fashion. He even managed to climb up behind some boxes in my classroom. He curled himself up in an upside-down bamboo hat and settled there for the day.

Now – about five weeks on – he is running, playing and climbing all over my house; keeping me awake at night and destroying my curtains and earthen walls in the way that kittens apparently do. When I become frustrated, I remember the circumstance in which I found him. I am able to turn a lot of my frustration into gratitude and joy at how far we have journeyed together and the beautiful gift of life has has received.

I am indelibly grateful to the angels, the Archangels, the acupuncturist, the strength of Toma’s life force. It is thanks to these things that Toma has made such an incredible recovery.

Not forgetting the importance of the compassion for all living beings that my life journey has taught me. A compassion that transcends fear; that allowed me to act from the space of my Higher Self even while I was still locked into my fear of the unknown entity “cats” and doubts about whether I really wanted to step up and take responsibility for this life that I had found or not.

This is the kind of compassion that arises from the recognition that I am you, and you are me. It is a compassion that knows that a dog is not that different from a person; nor a deer or a kitten that different from a dog. We are all interrelated. We are all one Life.

When we access compassion, we access this Truth.

It’s a process. Unlearning the fear of the unknown the illusion of separation has instilled in me; re-learning, instead, our ultimate connectedness. Perceiving that – on the deepest level – my pets are the one same Life that I Am: There is no separation.

I haven’t always been able to act from this place of compassion, either with people or with animals.

(I’m not at all sure I always can now, to be honest..)

Pimo was a throwaway dog in the village, but I would never have brought her home of my own accord. She came to me via a previous partner who – while difficult to be in relationship with – showed wonderful compassion for animals.

I was scared of Pimo at first, just as I was of Toma.

I made her sleep in a cardboard box pushed into the farthest corner of my room the first night, expressing anger at the poor and (no doubt) bewildered puppy when she barked for ice cream.

Yet another important life lesson learned from my pets: conquering our fear of the unknown is, more than anything, about making it known.

Within a couple of days – as I came to know and trust Pimo – she was sleeping curled up against me at nights. I literally fed her from my hand for the first few weeks because she didn’t eat much out of her bowl.

What is known is rarely feared as much as the unknown.

The more we connect with a loving intention, the more this loving intention is reflected back to us. Gradually we learn to trust. As we do, our fear dissolves. (A lesson we would do well to learn around the diversity in our own species, also).

It took me less than a day to get over my wariness of Toma and my fear of his teeth and claws. He may use them in play sometimes, but he is a tremendously loving and affectionate bundle of fun who is addicted to nose bumps and cuddles.

Pimo loved kittens so much. She raised three of them abandoned on a mountain road as if her own; giving them milk though she had never had puppies. She showed me, by her living example of unconditional love, how to grow into more of my own.

If I didn’t open my life up to Pimo, imagine all the unconditional love, the fun, the games, the companionship, the walks in nature, the nights with her sleeping curled against my stomach, the life experiences and life lessons I would have missed out on.

The more we open up to, the more we are able to receive.

Just as Pimo brought so many gifts into my life, I know Toma will too.

He already has.

We came here to evolve and grow, and I am on a continuous learning curve with regard to my pets as much as with anything else in my life.

I may not have been a good pet parent from the start, but I have certainly learned how to grow into one.

I may not have been naturally kind, loving and compassionate with animals, but I am on a journey learning how to be more and more so.

Our pets are our spiritual partners. They are a mirror showing us the places where we can grow into more love and compassion; an everyday reminder of how to be more fully present.

We can always grow into more love and compassion.

We can always grow into more presence.

These are things we can never have too much of. These are things that can help us create a superlative world.

Regarding the visual content of the site, where the images used are not my own I have done my best to credit the original author. If the author of any such image would like it removed from the site, please contact me and I will oblige as soon as possible.